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Windows Media Player 11 and Urge 488

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the toggling-the-new-toys dept.
j0e_average writes "The Washington Post is running a review of Microsoft's next version of Media Player, and its integration with MTV's new music service Urge. According to reviewer, Rob Pegoraro, 'Not only does this new, Windows XP-only software promote Urge to the exclusion of other retailers, you can't shop at this store-- or even just play your Urge downloads -- in any earlier version of Windows Media Player.' The Microsoft/Urge subscription model contains a new twist as well: 'Urge also lets you rent songs: $9.95 a month (or $99 a year) lets you download all the tracks you want to a computer, while $14.95 ($149 a year) lets you transfer those downloads to most newer Windows Media-compatible players. These rented songs can't be burned to CD and go silent if you stop paying the fees.'"
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Windows Media Player 11 and Urge More

Windows Media Player 11 and Urge

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  • i bet (Score:5, Funny)

    by bensafrickingenius ( 828123 ) on Sunday May 21, 2006 @11:18PM (#15378075)
    "These rented songs can't be burned to CD and go silent if you stop paying the fees"

    Oh reeeeely? We'll see.
    • Why rent, when you can squat?

    • Re:i bet (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SparksMcGee ( 812424 ) on Sunday May 21, 2006 @11:31PM (#15378117)
      Doubtless people are going to be having a lot of fun at MTV and Microsoft's expense, and a lot of good points will be made. But personally I think this is a reasonably solid business model if the selection is decent, and ultimately I think it'd be good for the market if this were widely adopted. I don't have moral objections to paying for music I like (necessarily), but even iTunes is IMHO a somewhat expensive proposition--I could likely rattle off 20 songs I like in 20 seconds, and there's $20 right there. It's great for individual songs, but it just can't hope to compete with the size of music library I'd personally like to accumulate. However, when you take off the song cap for a reasonable price (and I think 33 cents a day is pretty reasonable), you've piqued my interest pretty well. In essence, I think that this represents a reasonable lowering of prices to a point where I can actually get all the music I want as a consumer at a price that I don't consider absurd (goodness knows the RIAA has seemed reluctant enough to compromise on that last point).

      My guess is this won't be perfect--I have certain reservations about MTV as a distributor, inasmuch as I have no basis for assuming that they'll be competent and, given the performance of other services (a la Napster) the burden of proof is on them. Nevertheless, despite points to the contrary, I believe that this is unquestionably a step in the right direction. It represents a value to the consumer and, moreover, some real competition in the ITMS/iPod dominated digital music market--who knows, it might even persuade people that there are reasonable alternatives to a $400 piece of music-playing hardware(not that I'm claiming the iPod is a bad product, but it's Apple--charing a premium for hardware is what they DO).

    • Re:i bet (Score:5, Funny)

      by Joel from Sydney ( 828208 ) on Monday May 22, 2006 @12:36AM (#15378335)
      It's true -- I just signed up and purchased some John Cage tracks, and they've all gone silent!

      • Re:i bet (Score:3, Funny)

        by Jugalator ( 259273 )
        I purchased some new pop music and it went silent too.
        Then I touched my ears, and they were both bleeding... :-(

  • WMPlayer 11 beta (Score:3, Informative)

    by penguin_asylum ( 822967 ) on Sunday May 21, 2006 @11:20PM (#15378086)
    I tried out the beta of windows media player 11... It's pretty nice looking, and the new organization for the music library is a lot better, but all in all it feels like a skin for windows media player 10 sometimes (not that there's anything wrong with that...) It does look much sleeker than version 10, but I'm hoping they'll make changes to skin mode as well, which currently looks the same as it did in version 10.
  • Where do I sign up?

    Not.

  • Huh? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    People still pay attention to MTV?

  • How is this a new twist? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by WalterGR ( 106787 ) on Sunday May 21, 2006 @11:21PM (#15378090) Homepage

    The Microsoft/Urge subscription model contains a new twist as well: 'Urge also lets you rent songs: $9.95 a month (or $99 a year) lets you download all the tracks you want to a computer, while $14.95 ($149 a year) lets you transfer those downloads to most newer Windows Media-compatible players. These rented songs can't be burned to CD and go silent if you stop paying the fees.'

    How is this a "new twist"? Listen Rhapsody [real.com] has been using this model for years.

    • I don't see the point in the $99 service unless it is used on an ultra compact computer. I listen to most of my audio away from a computer, only being able to use it at a computer is more of a leash. $149 a year isn't so bad though as it is less than buying 10-15 albums a year but having access to several thousand instead.

    • Re:How is this a new twist? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Hawthorne01 ( 575586 ) on Monday May 22, 2006 @12:11AM (#15378261)
      Umn, it's a new twist because a music channel that doesn't play music anymore slapped their label on it! It'l have all the success previous subscription-based music services have had, and more! You'll, um, get exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the new season of RealWorld vs. RoadRules vs. Reality! You'll get exclusive whiney outtakes from teens who think that $100k for a sweet 16 party is the very minimum!! You'll get all this, and more, for only $9.95 a month! That is, until we decide to raise the price to $19.95 a month, and you'll have to pay it, or your precious music goes bye-bye! Mawhahahahahah!!!!!

      At least with the $0.99/track pricing model, I know that music is mine, no matter what the RIAA and Apple decide is a fair price 5 years down the road.

    • while $14.95 ($149 a year) lets you transfer those downloads to most newer Windows Media-compatible players.

      That statement is also a lie. To the best of my knowledge, none of the Windows Media compatible mobile phones can touch the DRM used in Windows Media files. Pehaps they have a line of portable players that can, but I've never seen them.

  • Should be called "Purge" (Score:5, Funny)

    by myth_of_sisyphus ( 818378 ) on Sunday May 21, 2006 @11:22PM (#15378092)
    As in, I stopped paying my bill, and now all my music is "purged" from my computer.

  • sigh (Score:5, Insightful)

    by yagu ( 721525 ) * <yayagu@[ ]il.com ['gma' in gap]> on Sunday May 21, 2006 @11:22PM (#15378093) Journal

    Music should be simple to enjoy. Music doesn't need safeguarding the way the industry jealously guards their Jewel Crowns.

    I do "support" outside my everyday professional experience for family and friends, and describing "how to" is a minefield and Media Player 11/Urge don't help.

    I've not verified what the article says, but the warning is WMP11 is more than an update, it's an upgrade, i.e., the only way to recover from it to previous versions is with System Restore. WTF?

    I guess that helps me decide, I'm not going to load it, I'm going to steer anyone who's interested away from it, and anyone who has questions about it, I'll turn away.

    I won't single out Microsoft for the miserable state of music and the ability to enjoy today. Everyone seems to be trying their best to squeeze money from entertainment. I'm not opposed to paying for entertainment, but I come from an older generation where:

    • my vinyl and CDs played on my downstairs turntable and CD player, and my upstairs equipment.
    • and played in my car (the CDs)
    • and at my friends' houses
    • and could be ripped to computers and played on mp3 players.
    • were simple (though even ripping got more complicated)

    I remember early on with CDs the promise of things to come. Heck, my first CD player actually had a DIN connector on the back of it which was referenced in the manual only as "for future use". I dreamed of liner notes running to the TV, lyrics, lots of cool stuff. It never happened.

    And when did album info become available? When the public contributed it via the early public CDDB database. That was a great thing, but was (and still is) fraught with errors and the fickleness of description by the first contributor in.

    This was the first of many betrayals by the music industry, and I've not seen any push back that looks promising.

    WMP11 is just one more non-contributor to the music-enjoying demographic. They're all selling themselves as providing an entertainment "experience". They're all full of shit.

    • Re:sigh (Score:2, Informative)

      by kalebdf ( 971322 )
      Don't worry about downloading and installing WMP11. You CAN uninstall it.

      When you get to the ADD/REMOVE Programs window, click the check box at the top that says "Show Updates."

      As for the rights of our music, it should be ours (to do with it as we please--listen, rip, destroy it with a shredder, or resell it) we bought it!

      -specialk

    • Re:sigh (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Nefarious Wheel ( 628136 ) on Sunday May 21, 2006 @11:59PM (#15378222) Journal
      They can all go to heck. I'll just sit on the back porch and play my guitar.

      To quote the late Jerry Garcia: "Make up your own music".

  • What's the logic here? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Gothic_Walrus ( 692125 ) on Sunday May 21, 2006 @11:23PM (#15378095) Journal
    Please tell me they're not seriously expecting this to compete with iTunes.

    Even with MTV and Microsoft pushing it together, I think that the fact that you can't burn the music is going to turn away most of their potential customers. People are stupid, but given the choice between owning DRMed music that you can burn or renting it and watching it all vanish when you stop paying...well, I'd hope that people aren't that stupid.

    • well, I'd hope that people aren't that stupid.
      If he were not dead, I would suggest you talk to PT Barnum [wikipedia.org] about this (well, plus the fact that the article suggests that PT Barnum did not actually say the quote).



      • I would suggest you talk to PT Barnum

        The better quote (for this context) I've seen attributed to PT is this:

        "No one ever became poor underestimating human intelligence."

        ("became poor" has been seen as "gone broke" and other similar fragments.

    • Somehow, people think the subscription model works. But, I don't see this being offered with Movies on demand. The closest thing is Netflix, but even then, it's only possible to get so many a month.

      I think the appeal of having EVERYTHING at the tips of ones fingers is neat, but in reality, people don't listen to EVERYTHING. I mean, of the ten thousand plus songs I have, I listen to like 100 regularly......
    • Please tell me they're not seriously expecting this to compete with iTunes.

      It will be the default install for 95% of computers sold.

      That's the great benefit of owning a monopoly. You can use it to dominate markets you wouldn't normally have a hope of even competing in.

    • Re:What's the logic here? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by WalterGR ( 106787 ) on Sunday May 21, 2006 @11:48PM (#15378179) Homepage

      People are stupid, but given the choice between owning DRMed music that you can burn or renting it and watching it all vanish when you stop paying...well, I'd hope that people aren't that stupid.

      I subscribe to Rhapsody [real.com], so I guess I am that stupid.

      I know some people feel very... passionately... about "renting" music rather than "owning" it. But I like having access to thousands upon thousands of tracks that I can listen to at any time. Rhapsody has two million tracks.

      Am I going to listen to all two million? Of course not. But I have extremely varied tastes and like exploring new music. Last week I was listening to my favorite indie tracks, then I got bored. So I started checking out world music - African, Caribbean, Brazilian. Then I got bored and listened to some hip-hop. Then I got bored and listened to some music from Rent.

      In a given week, I'll listen to hundreds of different tracks - most of them brand new to me. How much do I pay? About $12.

      But that's ok, call me stupid. ;)

      • First off, no offense intended - it was a generalization, and the fact that you can write in coherent English to post here takes away the "stupid" automatically. :)

        I probably shouldn't have used the word "owned;" what I meant to get across there was simply that having the ability to burn the music could very well be the deciding factor. In fact, Rhapsody's a better example here than iTunes is...

        If you had the choice between two services with the same functionality but one gave you the ability to burn t

        • If you had the choice between two services with the same functionality but one gave you the ability to burn the music - even if you do have to pay more to do so - which would you choose?

          Depends on how much more. And if you even listen to music on CDs. I listen either on my comp or through my MP3 player or the mp3 player + fm transmitter in my car.

          I download more new songs a month than would cost to buy through Itunes rather than 'rent.'

          Another minor detail on the PlaysForSure - you can buy to burn the son

        • Re:What's the logic here? (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 ) on Monday May 22, 2006 @12:39AM (#15378344) Homepage Journal
          Why does it matter whether you can "burn" an audio CD? For music, you may as well use a Bic lighter. Portable audio players are so dang small and can hold a hundred albums in a third the volume of a single CD jewel case, such that there is no point in CDs except as a purchase medium.

          It is clearly a subscription service and shouldn't be treated as if that is the only choice you get, you can still buy single tracks or buy physical CDs. You trade "buying" 10-15 CDs a year (though you can still buy if you like) for the ability to legally sample any of a few million tracks at any time without having to commit to buying them, and still get to time-shift. To me, that sounds like a decent trade-off.

          I don't think a subscription service where you get to subscribe to a huge library for dirt cheap and you get to download what ever you want and keep them forever is a viable business model. I understand basic psychology, people would subscribe for a month for the cost of a single CD and acquire a library of a lifetime and unsubscribe. What you want seems to be the have-your-cake-and-eat-it variety, which frankly, makes you seem a lot like how the RIAA behaves.
    • Even with MTV and Microsoft pushing it together, I think that the fact that you can't burn the music is going to turn away most of their potential customers.

      Uhhh, how about the big stab in the rear end this is to Napster, the other "also rans" and their customers? If you have a subscription to one of these other services, you might wish you could have burned those songs because M$ is (from the article),

      doing something drastic: It's throwing its own MSN Music store under the bus and launching a new musi

      • Boy are you stupid. Napster and Yahoo Unlimited and Rhapshody aren't going out of business - they are in the same biz as Urge. What is going down is the MSN Music Store - which is not part of those other services at all.
    • I don't know. My first reaction was skeptical, like everyone else's here seems to be. But the more I think about it, I'm beginning to think it's really not a horrible idea.

      Consider this: A lot of people are paying similar amounts of money for XM or Sirius satellite radio, and they mostly listen to music. Satellite radio has hundreds of channels that play all kinds of music, but it's still decided by other people what songs you're going to listen to. You can't just turn over to "Classic Rock Channel #1

  • I think that's just sick. They take our culture, make it proprietary, then rent it back to us at an astronomical fee. It's OUR culture, it should be free.

  • Yo!MTV Craps (Score:5, Funny)

    by ystar ( 898731 ) on Sunday May 21, 2006 @11:32PM (#15378119)
    I have the URGE to avoid this.

  • psh.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by zx-15 ( 926808 ) on Sunday May 21, 2006 @11:36PM (#15378133)
    Microsoft imposing its own proprietary standards using dominant position in OS market... Such a cliche

  • Salesforce.com (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thealsir ( 927362 ) on Sunday May 21, 2006 @11:39PM (#15378146) Homepage
    Looks like the teasing from the CEO of CRM got microsoft in a squeeze. Subscription this, subscription that. People aren't going to be too warm and fuzzy to the idea of having to pay continuous fees just to listen to music. I mean, a lot of music you just listen to off and on, and paying over and over again just seems absurd.

    Electricity, water, resources that have fixed, continuous costs, that makes sense in the consumer's eye....but software? Music? Digital stuff with practically zero reproduction cost? This is what drives people to piracy...they can't visualize the need for software et al to have continuous fees...it feels like extortion.

    Despite how justified/neat business model it may be, that's what the average person deep down thinks. RIAA et al do not understand this. MSFT seems to have followed the same path.
  • I was happy as a Clam when they folded.. and i'll happily NOT install this version on anything I have. For just 1 million dollars you might actually be able to OWN a song and put it anywhere you want it.. But it'd have to be DRM'D so you could never give it to anyone else. Bah music companies sicken me.
  • I'll just keep stealing my music.

  • Lousy Article; misses a real problem with Urge (Score:5, Informative)

    by MBraynard ( 653724 ) on Sunday May 21, 2006 @11:52PM (#15378195) Journal
    The writer probably was unfamiliar with the other services that have been out for over a year that have the same offering - Napster, Yahoo Unlimited, and several others.

    What Urge is missing - and what I was looking forward to - was a low low intro price for the first year. I got the first year of Yahoo - including to go - for $60.

    Also, Urge is more expenensive than Yahoo as you can get the non-to-go version for only $5 at Yahoo rather than $10 at Urge.

    All the other complaints in the article - old news. Either the PlayforSure thing is for you or it isn't.

  • wonderful (Score:2, Funny)

    by krotkruton ( 967718 )
    This sounds exactly like something I, a 22 year old CS major, would love. I mean, being a CS major, I love Microsoft, and who in the right mind doesn't want to have all sorts of restrictions put on their music? Combine that with MusicTV, who is just so popular with everyone over the age of 13, and you've got a recipe for for some great sales. I can't wait to get episodes of Yo' Mamma for a monthly fee. I'm not sure why everyone else is talking about music or competing with iTunes since MTV hasn't played
  • I'll take purchase-to-own for $0.99, Alex.

    As much as people tend to bash it, but speaking in relative terms, iTMS still has the most consumer-friendly terms compared to other major players out there. Subscription models work only for magazines and pron accounts... an no one takes my magazines away if I end my subscription to it.
  • Effectively, isn't this an awful lot like a compulsory license? The difference here, I suppose, is that it is voluntary and is enforced by private industry rather than government.

    Hasn't the EFF proposed a compulsory license plan as a solution to the problem of file sharing? That makes it good, right?

  • MTV doesn't play music recorded over 17 years ago, which is nearly all I'm interested in listening to. Original copyright law released all monopoly control of those recordings. By rights, I shouldn't have to pay anyone to listen to the folk music from the previous generation.

    If the recording industry actually worked under that fair system, they'd have to sell a lot better quality new music to actually earn a living off current recording artists. Instead, they just rip off everything they possibly can, and p
  • Lets make a patriotic themed song, then when it gets encrypted and people can't listen to the song after a month or so, we can accuse this company of terrorism.

    I'd really like to see that in court.

  • At first glance.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by east coast ( 590680 ) on Monday May 22, 2006 @12:22AM (#15378292)
    To be honest at first when I read this I scoffed but I'm not sure it's that bad of an idea. Granted, I have a large CD collection and wouldn't do this but for the types that don't mind putting their cash towards subscription radio is this that much different? 10 bucks a month and you get to "create your own playlist" essentially. How much is XM or Sirius? If this service has a wide selection it really won't be that much different and the fact that you can hear the song you want when you want makes it more valuable than satellite radio.

    There is a large segment of the public that doesn't want to put the cash down for a serious music collection and this could be their way of getting a wide selection without the price tag on a large permanent music collection.

  • Not so much... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nobodynoone ( 940116 ) on Monday May 22, 2006 @12:27AM (#15378304)
    I am SO TIRED of all this DRM crap. Everything - and I mean EVERYTHING - has some sort of incompatible, misconfigured, hard-to-use "Rights Management" software/encryption/whatever. DVDs have CSS, Displays have HDCP, Music has Fairplay/WMP, and the list continues. Is any of this really designed to "protect the product"? No! It is designed to protect the profit margin of the record/film company.
    None of the aformentioned technologies were designed with the end-user in mind. Did anybody at Microsoft/URGE even sit down and think about whether or not their customers really wanted to be tied yet another proprietary format that works only with a certain manufacturer's proprietary player? Lets face it, the iPod/iTunes interface only works because the iPod's particular proprietary format has become not-so-proprietary because more than half of the Audio Players out there are iPods, and can use Fairplay'd songs.

    Here is what I want. An easy-to-use, universal encryption scheme everyone can agree on. Make it burnable. Make it sharable. Make it brain-dead simple. Make all of the record companes pledge their unwavering support. Heck, Make it 4096-bit RSA if you really want to. Then make it easy to use, and have all new audio players - Apple, Dell, Creative, MS, etc - support it. Then drop the price to 49 cents a song and $5.99 a record, and watch your profits SOAR. Why would they soar? Because at those prices, with those features, and those major names backing it, nobody would really feel like hunting on a Gnutella network for a decent-quality version of their favorite John Tesh song. People would willingly buy the audio player they liked, because they could use their songs on all of them. Illegal song sharing would largely dry up. Record companies would be happy. OEMs would be happy. I would be happy.

    Just my (slightly more than) 2 cents.

    • Re:Not so much... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by swordgeek ( 112599 ) on Monday May 22, 2006 @01:45AM (#15378506) Journal
      What you're proposing would be a HUGE benefit for the consumer, a great win for the musician, and a disaster for the recording industry. The fighting, incompatible formats, backwards compatability issues, DRM, all help generate profit for the companies. That's the real reason they don't get together.

      When CDs first came out, the cry was "perfect sound forever." When audiophiles started to complain about the sound quality, the industry claimed that they were hearing things (with the exception of the high-end, who sold insane CD players). Now that the CD is standard and players are zero-profit commodities, they need to come up with a new format which forces people to buy new gear and replace all of their music again. Enter SACD and HDCD. Suddenly, the very people that used to tell us that CDs are perfect, are now claiming that the new format(s) are MUCH better sounding than crappy old CDs.

      None of this is intended to benefit the consumer or the musician. Let me repeat that: None of this is intended to benefit the consumer or the musician!" The music industry exists for no reason other than making money, and the most efficient way of doing that is to screw the consumer.

  • URGE in practice (Score:4, Interesting)

    by benwaggoner ( 513209 ) <ben.waggoner@mic ... t.com minus poet> on Monday May 22, 2006 @12:59AM (#15378392) Homepage
    I work for Microsoft (but not on Windows Media Player), so I got an early trial of the product, and have been using it for about a month now.

    I didn't really get it when it was first pitched, but the hybrid subscription/paid model works great. In the years I was using iTunes, I never really did much purchasing of tracks, since it seemed ephemeral, and not really any cheaper than buying on physical media.

    With URGE, I pay my flat fee, and can try ANYTHING - it isn't $9.99 ever time I want to give an album a spin to see whether or not I like it beyond 30 second previews. I can play it on any of three different PCs, and can even transfer songs to my Treo to listen to on the plane, or stream them live to my Xbox 360 for an entertainment experience. And if I like something, I can just buy it just like iTunes and burn it to CD or whatever.

    As for pricing, $15/month for as much new stuff as I want to listen to? I've already got 20 new albums in rotation, stuff I likely wouldn't have bought before but found via the recommendation system, and really enjoy (I'm embarassingly obsessed with the Arctic Monkeys now). Ast $15/month, the amount I would have paid buying that music would have covered the fee for years.

    A couple of cool little features:
    A good selection of music videos, linked to the songs.
    After setting up a new machine on your account, you can tell it to sync up to EVERYTHING you have on your other machines.
    Even though there are the three recommended machines, any PlaysForSure device seems to work fine, like my Treo 700w phone, and an ancient Creative MuVo I had laying around.

    Anyway, I've been really happy with it, and after years of trying to get a good home-wide music experience out of iTunes, it's already working a lot better for me, in large part to support by a much wider selection of accesory vendors.

    • Re:URGE in practice (Score:3, Interesting)

      by swordgeek ( 112599 )
      That's nice for you. Apparently you like giving money to your bosses unnecessarily.

      I get music from the library. I listen to music at the store before buying it. I borrow it from my friends. Paying to listen to it before paying to buy it is the sort of marketing that only makes sense if you don't think too hard about it.

      How about this: Maybe clothes stores should start charging rental fees to try on clothes before you buy them. Car dealerships can start charging rental fees for test drives. What a wonderful
      • I'm happy the library works for you. It's worth $15/month for me to be able to rent music naked :).

        Also, URGE is about 2M tracks, which I imagine is quite a bit more than even a large library.

    • I'm so unimpressed. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by twitter ( 104583 ) on Monday May 22, 2006 @01:55AM (#15378521) Homepage Journal
      With URGE, I pay my flat fee, and can try ANYTHING - it isn't $9.99 ever time I want to give an album a spin to see whether or not I like it beyond 30 second previews. I can play it on any of three different PCs, and can even transfer songs to my Treo to listen to on the plane, or stream them live to my Xbox 360 for an entertainment experience. And if I like something, I can just buy it just like iTunes and burn it to CD or whatever.

      As for pricing, $15/month for as much new stuff as I want to listen to? I've already got 20 new albums in rotation, stuff I likely wouldn't have bought before but found via the recommendation system, and really enjoy ... Ast $15/month, the amount I would have paid buying that music would have covered the fee for years.

      Wow, for fifteen bucks a month plus the cost of all the newest M$ toys and software, I can stream my music to my TV where my $40/month cable subscription already pipes 30 channels of endless hours of music I already don't listen to? Fantastic! Besides that music source I don't listen to, there's plenty of online music streams these days. You know, like the internet archive [archive.org] and their 34,000 live concerts? Don't forget the creative commons people, who also want to promote worth while music. Why would I want to rent a source of music from the usual RIAA pigs again?

      What was it that WiMP has that Amarok [kde.org] was lacking? Wait a minute, WiMP does not do lyrics, cover art or even wikipedia lookups?

      Sarcasm off. The RIAA and Microsoft are both based on a scarcity that does not exist. The music publishers are damaged and people have routed around them. Microsoft too has been routed around. There are plenty of alternatives to both. Restricting your users while other do not is fatal. Your supposed world of plenty looks awfully limited.

      • Re:I'm so unimpressed. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by benwaggoner ( 513209 ) <ben.waggoner@mic ... t.com minus poet> on Monday May 22, 2006 @02:23AM (#15378582) Homepage
        Sure, there are lots of alternatives.

        But as a busy guy with three small children, searching out the good stuff via those other means just isn't worth the time and attention involved. That was my problem with Napster back in the day - just too darn much of a pain in the butt to get a full album, well encoded, with correct metadata. Better to spend that time to write an article, get a check, and just buy the CDs. The scarcity isn't music. It's the music I wan't, in high enough quality that it doesn't bug me, with the right metadata, with a pricing model that doesn't penalize me for experimentation.

        $15/month isn't even 10% of our monthly entertainment budget around here, but it's sure more than 10% fo my entertainment value right now.

        10 years ago, I had a $200/month used CD habit. URGE gives me the same shopping experience for a lot less money and shelf space, and naked (it's a muggy night here in Portland...).

        Oh, FYI, WMP does do lyrics (look in the Options), although I haven't seen much yet with that data populated.

  • WMP11 supports many retailers besides URGE (Score:3, Interesting)

    by I'm Don Giovanni ( 598558 ) on Monday May 22, 2006 @03:58AM (#15378765)
    "Not only does this new, Windows XP-only software promote Urge to the exclusion of other retailers,..."

    WMP11 supports many retailers besides URGE, as can be seen here [pcmag.com].
    Here's a link to the PCMag review of WMP11 that contains the above page. [pcmag.com]

    The retailers shown in the above links are:
    MSN Music Store
    audible.com
    Napster
    MovieLink
    WallMart
    XM Satellite Radio
    f.y.e.
    Live365.com
    PureTracks
    PassAlong
    URGE

    That's fewer than the number of retailers that WMP10 supports (WMP supports the above (minus URGE) plus CinemaNow, CourtTV, emusic, ESDC, MLB, msn/soundsgood.com, MusicGiants, MusicMatch, musicNow, MyStation, SongTouch, soundBuzz, GetMusic), but WMP11 is still in beta, and may very well support all of those when the RTM version is released.

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